It’s another busy show today, so buckle in…
As the hateful rhetoric escalates toward the Islamic Cultural/Community Center planned for a few blocks away from the site of “Ground Zero,” we’ll take a look at the man behind the idea. In today’s Huffington Post, Sam Stein writes:
In March 2003, federal officials were being criticized for disrespecting the rights of Arab-Americans in their efforts to crack down on domestic security threats in the post-9/11 environment. Hoping to calm the growing tempers, FBI officials in New York hosted a forum on ways to deal with Muslim and Arab-Americans without exacerbating social tensions. The bureau wanted to provide agents with “a clear picture,” said Kevin Donovan, director of the FBI’s New York office.
Brought in to speak that morning — at the office building located just blocks from Ground Zero — was one of the city’s most respected Muslim voices: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. The imam offered what was for him a familiar sermon to those in attendance. “Islamic extremism for the majority of Muslims is an oxymoron,” he said. “It is a fundamental contradiction in terms.”
And then continues:
Flash forward six-and-a-half years, and Feisal Abdul Rauf occupies a far different place in the political consciousness. The imam behind a controversial proposal to build an Islamic cultural center near those same FBI offices has been called “a radical Muslim,” a “militant Islamist” and, simply, the “enemy” by conservative critics. His Cordoba House project, meanwhile, has been framed as a conduit for Hamas to funnel money to domestic terrorist operations.
For those who actually know or have worked with the imam, the descriptions are frighteningly — indeed, depressingly — unhinged from reality. The Feisal Abdul Rauf they know, spent the past decade fighting against the very same cultural divisiveness and religious-based paranoia that currently surrounds him.
Sam Stein will join me at the top of the show to talk about the reality vs the fear mongering in this “nontroversy.”
It is election season, and today we’ll meet David Segal,who’s running to fill the Congressional seat being vacated by Patrick Kennedy from Rhode Island. In their endorsement, the Blue America PAC wrote about Segal:
Sometimes you settle on a candidate who you know is going to vote right all the time– someone who has the best interests of working families in their mind. We could do a lot worse than that, especially in a Congress filled with sleazy, corrupt self-servers looking out for the interests of wealthy campaign contributors and Big Business. David Segal is far more than just someone who will vote the right way. If his record as a Rhode Island legislator is any indication of what kind of a congressman he’s likely to be, we could be looking at another member on a caliber of Alan Grayson or Donna Edwards, a real leader for progressive values and ideas.
You can help Segal with a donation by clicking here.
Next, we turn our attention toward BP, who’s still at it… but with the help of our government. The Daily Beast’s Rick Outzen today writes “BP Oil Spill Coverup,” and will join us to talk about his story that says while the officials claim most of the oil has disappeared, fisherman hired by BP are still finding tar balls– and being instructed to hide their discoveries.
In hour two, we’ll get our regular report from the Talk Radio News Service.
And then we’ll lighten up a bit with comedian Paul Provenza — the man behind (as in producer/director/editor) one of the filthiest movies ever (sort of) The Aristocrats, Showtime’s newest funny show, The Green Room with Paul Provenza, and author of the book, “Satiristas: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs and Vulgarians” By the way, if you’d like to encourage the powers that be to bring back “The Green Room,” you can send a note to greenroom.showtime@gmail.com.